HMV hopes for sales boost with Techshop launch

For decades HMV has been one of the most successful music retailers in the UK and is still the largest of its kind in the UK. In recent years the company has suffered a decline in sales however largely due to the growing amount of access to music from other services such as iTunes. As an attempt to reverse these declining sales the company has just launched their first Techshop.

The first Techshop store was opened in the One New Change mall in London. It is a spin-off store from HMV that will focus less on CDs, Blu-rays, DVDs and games and more on technology and consumer electronics products such as speaker docks, iPods, iPads, other tablets and more. The company will be hoping for success in the run up to Christmas and will also open up another Techshop during the build-up.

Evidence that this new format of stores will comes from the success the company had with another similar trial that they did which extended the availability of their range of technology products with their HMV Fast Forward stores. That’s according to the last HMV trading update on the September 9th. As The Inquirer reports, whether or not the HMV Techshop will succeed is yet to be established.

HMV have been forced into taking this kind of action, despite not knowing whether it will succeed or not, as their overall sales had declined 15% for the last quarter. If they were to carry on the way they are an inevitable fate awaits them, similar to what happened to their former competitors Virgin Megastores. The future is looking tough for the company who has for many years succeeded in what they know best but now face entering new territory which already has established retailers.

Do you think the HMV Techshop will be able to get the company out of their slump?